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Bonnie is a ''pregnant'' hurricane with second eye
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA pronounced Hurricane
Bonnie ''pregnant'' Wednesday when a pilot who flew inside the
hurricane reported seeing a second eye within the storm system.
''I saw a large, domed cloud that looked like a
mini-hurricane swirling out of the top of Bonnie,'' said pilot
Ken Broda, who has piloted a NASA ER-2 airplane into the storm
twice since it entered the Caribbean.
Bonnie hammered the North Carolina coast Wednesday with
winds in excess of 100 mph, torrential rains and heavy surf.
''We're calling Bonnie a pregnant hurricane,'' said David
Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. ''It's the first time someone has reported
seeing that.''
Steitz said the mini-hurricane, born at 55,000 feet , posed
no additional threat and may have dissipated quickly.
''At that altitude, it could not spin off into a totally
separate storm system,'' he said.
A team of NASA and other U.S. government weather scientists
made a third flight into the hurricane Wednesday to study
lightning and perhaps gather additional data on several other
anomalies, including an asymmetrical ''blinking'' eye that
disappeared and reappeared.
''Bonnie is like nothing we would expect,'' said weather
scientist Ed Zipser, who was aboard one of five aircraft that
flew inside the hurricane Monday. One of the planes, a DC-8,
actually ran into a snow storm inside the hurricane, Zipser
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